The international art market can be as rapacious as the stock market - the profit margins as horrendous as the price ranges. Never before has art been such a commodity as it is today. The world's top galleries and auction houses are turning record profits: in February, 2007, London did 590 million euros in business with auctions of artwork in just five days.

Reporter Beate Thalberg found her way into the back rooms of the art market to see who sets the prices, who pays them and how a small circle of globally networked art critics agree on a few dozen artists to become the celebrity names of the international art world - whose works are shown and talked about and bought and sold on a global scale.

In interviews from Moscow, London, Leipzig, Vienna and New York, auctioneers such as the Austrian Tobias Meyer of Sotheby's New York, gallery owners like the German Gerd Lybke, the American artist Jeff Koons, and the globally operating art dealer and advisor Simon de Pury speak for the first time to the media about the rules of the game as defined by art dealers, auctioneers, collectors, fair organizers and exhibitors.

Broadcasting Times:

DW-TV
TUES 11.03.2008 - 18:30 UTC
WED 12.03.2008 - 06:30 UTC
THURS 13.03.2008 - 00:30 UTC, 12:30 UTC

DW-TV USA/LATIN AMERICA
TUES 11.03.2008 - 18:30 UTC
WED 12.03.2008 - 06:30 UTC
THURS 13.03.2008 - 12:30 UTC